www.musicweek.com PROFILE WIXENMUSIC
THE BIGGEST MUSIC PUBLISHER YOU’VE NEVER HEARD OF...
RIGHT
Superstar roster: Wixen’s client base includes world- renowned artists such as Tom Petty and (above right) Neil Young
Wijayarathna who joined at launch in 2010, having previously worked for three years at Nettwerk One Music. “Quite a lot of people I’ve spoken to have assumed that those larger acts are on a major and never thought they’ve been with an independent for the past 30 years or so. So a lot of people are very shocked,” she says. The company’s arrival in the UK two years ago
addressed the simple economics that it was costing more to pay a sub-publisher than it would be to run a London office itself. According to the company’s president: “We
...well, maybe some of you have. Wixen Music’s UK presence is growing two years since it quietly but determinedly set about its burgeoning business in London
PUBLISHING BY PAUL WILLIAMS
N
eil Young, Tom Petty and countless other music giants have relied on its services for decades, but in the UK at least Wixen
Music is quite possibly the biggest music publisher you have never heard of. Launched by its president Randall Wixen in
the States back in 1978 to handle publishing administration and copyright management, the company finally opened its first overseas office in 2010 when it quietly set up shop in London. However, despite songs by the likes of The
Doors, The Black Keys, Rage Against The Machine and Journey (including a share of Don’t Stop Believin’) being entrusted to it, it is fair to say on this side of the Atlantic Wixen’s name is
not yet widely known. “We’ve flown under the radar for a number of
years [in the UK] and we finally put a real presence there and now we’re hoping to make people aware of an alternative they have,” says its California-based founder whose company’s UK interests were previously handled by sub-publisher IQ. When people do discover the riches Wixen has
on its books they are often taken aback, according to the company’s UK managing director Beth
ABOVE Global vision: Sharon Maroko Wixen and founder Randall Wixen
were paying an awful lot of money to our own sub-publisher there and we figured what we were paying in terms of commissions would cover the cost of having an office. And the second factor was we really had very few UK clients because we didn’t have a presence and people didn’t know who we were so we figured it would be a good place to have some local awareness and, if nothing else, we were covering the cost of the office with what we were saving in commissions.” Within six to nine months, he notes, the office
was already paying for itself. Initially, says Wijayarathna, the London office
prioritised ensuring the existing catalogue of about 50,000 songs from the US were being properly handled in the UK. While it is now adding UK names to its business, UK director/ secretary Naomi Asher reveals a very careful approach as to who to sign. “For someone to be one of our clients they
already need to be making money,” says Asher, who as Randall’s first cousin reflects its status as a family business and is just one of three UK staff members. “The model of the company is not one that lends itself to grabbing everything in sight and it’s not something that lends itself to taking a starving baby band, somebody who has just started out and moulding them and nurturing them. That’s not the model of the company. The model of the company is best for somebody who has releases out there and who isn’t getting properly paid for what they’ve already done. In this industry there are a lot of details that get missed. That’s what we do. We go in and look for those details.” As a past example of that, the company’s
founder points to the Traveling Wilburys whose line-up included Tom Petty, now a Wixen client for more than three decades. He suggests there were real discrepancies between what each of the five members was paid for the same amount of songwriting.
05.10.12 Music Week 21
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